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Through its Unicode implementation, Essbase Analytic Services enables employees of global businesses to view, in their own languages, company information stored in their Analytic Services databases.
The following topics of this chapter provide a brief overview of Unicode and describe the Analytic Services implementation of Unicode Standard.
Sharing data across national and language boundaries is a challenge for multi-national businesses. Traditionally, each computer stores and renders text based on its locale specification. A locale identifies the local language and identifies cultural conventions, such as currency and date format, data sort order, and character set encoding. The encoding of a character set refers to the specific set of bit combinations used to store the character text as data, as defined by a code page or an encoding format. In Analytic Services, code pages map characters to bit combinations for non-Unicode encodings.
Because different encodings can map the same bit combination to different characters, a file created on one computer can be misinterpreted by another computer that has a different locale.
Unicode Standard was developed to enable computers with different locales to share character data. Unicode provides encoding forms with thousands of bit combinations, enough to support the character sets of multiple languages simultaneously. By combining all character mappings into a single encoding form, Unicode enables users to view character data created on computers with different locale settings correctly.
Analytic Services conforms to version 2.1 of Unicode Standard and uses the popular UTF-8 encoding form within Unicode Standard. For additional information about the Unicode Standard, see www.unicode.org.
By providing Unicode support, Analytic Services helps solve the multi-national business problem of sharing data across the enterprise. Analytic Services users whose computers are set up in different languages can work with the same database. For example, using alias tables in their respective languages, users in Taiwan can view database reports in Chinese characters while users in France can view the same reports in French characters.
The following topics describe the fundamental characteristics of the Analytic Services implementation of Unicode:
Note: User-defined character sets (UDC) are not supported. SQL Interface does not work with Unicode-mode applications.
Analytic Services uses the ESSLANG variable to define the locale of a computer. You must specify the ESSLANG variable for each Analytic Server installation, and you should set ESSLANG to the locale that is defined for the operating system of the computer. Defining an ESSLANG variable on client computers is optional. If ESSLANG is defined on a client, Analytic Services uses the ESSLANG value as the computer locale. If no ESSLANG value is specified on a client, Analytic Services uses the locale specified for the operating system. For information about defining the ESSLANG variable, see the Essbase Analytic Services Installation Guide.
Note: As described in About Unicode, a locale specification contains several kinds of information about the language and culture that the computer supports. Analytic Services uses only the code-page portion of locale specifications. The cultural conventions and sort-order portions are not used.
Applications are designated as Unicode-mode applications or non-Unicode-mode applications.
Unicode-mode applications support multiple character sets. When Analytic Services works with Unicode-mode applications, it uses the UTF-8 encoding form to interpret and store character text. Character-based objects in Unicode-mode applications, such as member and alias names, can include characters from different languages.
Because Unicode-mode applications accept input files in non-Unicode-encoding as well as in UTF-8, Analytic Services relies on locale indicators and user prompting to read or write non-Unicode-encoded files. For a basic description of encoding, see About Unicode.
Clients working with Unicode-mode applications can have locales different from the locale of Analytic Server. For example, client computers with Japanese locales and client computers with German locales can work with the same Unicode-mode application on an instance of Analytic Server that has a Spanish locale.
For Unicode-mode applications, the limits of most object names are longer than the limits in non-Unicode-mode applications, and the limits are calculated based on characters rather than bytes. See Increased Name Lengths.
Non-Unicode-mode applications support one character set that is defined by a locale value that must be the same for Analytic Server and all non-Unicode clients that work with non-Unicode-mode applications. By default, Analytic Services creates applications in non-Unicode mode.
You can define an application as Unicode-mode when you create the application, or you can migrate a non-Unicode-mode application to Unicode mode in a separate step. For information about these processes, see Creating a New Unicode-Mode Application.
Note: You cannot convert a Unicode-mode application to non-Unicode mode.
Both Unicode-mode and non-Unicode-mode applications can reside on the same Analytic Server. For information to help determine the type of application to use for particular situations, see When to Use Unicode-Mode Applications.
Analytic Server must have permission to create Unicode-mode applications and to migrate existing applications to Unicode mode. When this permission is enabled, Analytic Server is said to be in Unicode mode. For information about granting or revoking this permission, see Setting Analytic Server to Unicode Mode.
Whether or not Analytic Server is in Unicode mode affects only the creation and migration of applications. Regardless of the Analytic Server Unicode setting, you can work with both Unicode mode and non-Unicode-mode applications.
For Unicode-mode applications, the maximum number of characters allowed in strings, such as application, database, and member names, is greater than the maximum allowed for non-Unicode-mode applications.
For non-Unicode-mode applications, the maximum length of most object names is calculated in bytes. For Unicode-mode applications, the maximum length of most object names is calculated based on the number of characters, regardless of how many bytes each character requires. Not limiting by bytes is advantageous for applications using multi-byte character sets, such as Chinese and Japanese. For example, member names in Unicode-mode applications can contain 80 characters, even if they are multi-byte characters. For a list of object-name size maximums for Unicode-mode and non-Unicode-mode applications, see Limits.
Note: The increase in size limits does not affect the size of the outline, but may affect the size of user-written client programs.
To take advantage of longer name sizes, users may decide to work with Unicode-mode applications, even if all users work in the same locale (See When to Use Unicode-Mode Applications.).
To support customers as they upgrade their computers to a Unicode-enabled release of Analytic Services, Analytic Services enables different versions of client and server software to communicate with each other. Table 34 summarizes the compatibility between different versions of Analytic Services client and server software. The following terminology is used in the table:
For each Analytic Server installation you must define the ESSLANG variable. For details about defining ESSLANG, see the Essbase Analytic Services Installation Guide. The ESSLANG variable is a locale definition, including a code page specification that maps bit combinations to characters. For example, to support American English, you can set ESSLANG to English_UnitedStates.Latin1@Binary.
Clients also use locales. ESSLANG variables are optional for clients. If ESSLANG is not defined on a client, the locale specified for the operating system is used.
Client and Analytic Server locale values must be the same for non-Unicode-mode clients and applications. For Unicode-mode applications, client and Analytic Server locale values can be different.
Analytic Services also supports use of non-Unicode-encoded files with Unicode-mode applications. In order to identify what type of encoding a file is, Analytic Services looks for UTF-8 signatures or locale indicators to identify the encoding. If a file contains neither encoding identifier and the file is not on Analytic Server, Administration Services prompts the user for the locale of the file. For details about locale indicators, see Encoding Indicators.
The Analytic Services Unicode File Utility program (ESSUTF8) includes options to insert UTF-8 signatures or locale headers in text files or you can a text editor or other means to insert them. For general information about the utility, see Analytic Services Unicode File Utility. For description and syntax of this utility, see the Technical Reference.
Hyperion Solutions provides Essbase Administration Services and MaxL to administer Unicode-mode applications. The main administration activities include, in addition to the normal Analytic Services administration activities, changing the Unicode-related mode of Analytic Server to enable or disable the following abilities:
Administration Services Console is a Unicode-mode client. You can use Administration Services Console with both Unicode and non-Unicode-mode applications. See Administering Unicode-Mode Applications for information about Unicode-related administration tasks.
To administer non-Unicode-mode applications, you can use Application Manager from previous Analytic Services releases that are not Unicode enabled.
Without recompilation, custom-written client programs used with Analytic Services releases prior to Rel. 7.0 are not Unicode-enabled. Such programs use short strings and short buffers. You can continue to use these programs with non-Unicode-mode applications.
In order to provide restricted access to Unicode-mode applications, these older custom-written client programs, depending on how they are written, can be recompiled in a Unicode-enabled release of Analytic Services. When recompiled, the programs work with long buffers but short strings.
For complete access to Unicode-mode and non-Unicode-mode applications, existing custom-written applications need to be modified using the new Analytic Services API functions for Unicode. Rewritten and compiled clients work with long buffers and long strings for full Unicode support. For information about updating custom-written client programs, see the API Reference.
You can use Spreadsheet Services to view data in both Unicode-mode applications and non-Unicode-mode applications. To run Spreadsheet Services, you must also run Essbase Deployment Services. See the installation guides for each of these products for preparation and installation information The Spreadsheet Add-in does not support Unicode.
To demonstrate Unicode-mode applications, the sample applications include a Unicode-mode application and database: Sample_U Basic. Member names in Sample_U Basic are in English.
Sample_U Basic includes four non-English alias tables and their import files: nameschn.alt (
Chinese), namesger.alt
(German), namesjpn.alt
(Japanese), and namesrsn.alt
(Russian).
Consider working with Unicode-mode applications only if you have any of the following situations:
When deciding on using Unicode-mode applications, you should also consider the following points:
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